Madrigal

What it means

The madrigal is the most significant secular vocal genre of the sixteenth century: a polyphonic piece, usually for four to six voices, set to an Italian poetic text. Unlike the strophic Lied it is through-composed — the music follows the text line by line, without repeating the music for new stanzas. Alongside this there is an older genre of the same name, differently built formally, from the fourteenth century, which is to be distinguished from the later one.

Musical use

The madrigal is the field on which text depiction was developed: individual words are represented musically — ascent through rising lines, pain through dissonance, haste through fast values. This procedure is called madrigalism. Over the course of the century the writing becomes ever bolder, with wide-ranging chromaticism and unusual harmonies in late works. Around 1600 the development leads to monody, accompanied solo song, and thereby to the beginning of opera. The English madrigal differs from the continental madrigal in tone and text treatment but stands close to it.

Performance practice

Work from the text: translate it, speak it aloud, and look for the places where the music depicts individual words. Keep the texture transparent; every voice must remain audible, including the middle voices. Sing with moderate vibrato and uniform pronunciation. Clarify the scoring — solo or choral — since both are possible and change the character. Watch for pure intonation in chromatic passages and practise them slowly as a chord progression.

Bear in mind that the question of scoring changes the character: sung solo, text depiction and harmonic subtleties come to the fore; sung chorally, the texture gains fullness but loses clarity. Decide deliberately and make it known in the programme. Watch the clefing, because chiavette notation points to a...

Check whether your edition is a transcription from mensural notation, because barlines there come from the editor.